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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29324994">The Creation of Quentin</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rizandace/pseuds/Rizandace'>Rizandace</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Immortality AU [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magicians (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, Depression, M/M, Multi, Suicidal Thoughts, The Old Guard AU</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 10:33:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,659</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29324994</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rizandace/pseuds/Rizandace</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Short snippets on the theme of Quentin: his origins, his relationships with his family, his many adventures. Set in the universe of <i>A Comet Pulled From Orbit</i>, contains major spoilers for that story.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh, William "Penny" Adiyodi/Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Immortality AU [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2105883</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>45</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. On Astrolabes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>[A continuation from “On Covert Operations” and “On Desperation,” chapters three and four of <em>The Explanation of Eliot</em>.]</p><p>The object in question was beautifully rendered, detailed and precise. A burnished color, the cool weight of it reassuringly solid in Q’s hands as he examined it, turning it over and over in his hands. This one wasn’t even particularly old; it looked to be a sixteenth century model, and Q had seen older and more beautiful in his time.</p><p>But this one… well, he’d never seen an astrolabe capable of wreaking so much havoc. He’d never held a scientific device in his hands that might have been able to bring the world to its knees. Scientific advancement often introduced a certain level of chaos to the world, but <em>this</em> was just—literal. Literally, the thing Q now held cradled in his hands as he sat up in bed, could have killed thousands of people in one fell swoop, sucking the magical energies out of them and funneling them into its user…</p><p>“You’re supposed to be asleep,” El said next to him, a hand flopping out and patting clumsily at his back. “I know you haven’t been sleeping well without me.”</p><p>“You think quite a bit of yourself,” Q said, but it was half-hearted, because he knew El hadn’t slept the full night through since the last time they’d been able to do so together, and it was the same for him. Of course it was. He set the astrolabe down on the small table beside the bed, and curled back into the crumpled sheets next to the warmth of El’s body. There was still an indentation on the other side, from where Margaret had been curled until just hours before, when she’d sneaked away to return to Jules. “Maybe I wouldn’t have had to wake up in the middle of the night and study our successfully purloined object of indescribable power, if you had let me look at it earlier.”</p><p>Even in the dark, Q could feel El lift an eyebrow at him. “Earlier, we were a bit busy.”</p><p>That was true. Q was pretending he was still sore all over, although of course soreness never lasted with them. He nuzzled back into the hollow beneath El’s throat, smelled the scent of him, tried to understand how he could have gone without it for even a few weeks while they’d worked this impossible, grueling, dangerous job. Only now, with El back where he belonged, and the danger over, did Q allow himself to feel the full extent of his fear. Yes, they couldn’t die. Probably. But with so many dangerous magicians, all seeking power for their own ends… there were plenty of consequences frightening enough to contemplate.</p><p>“And in any case,” El said to him, the words sleepy and muffled in the top of Q’s head, “it’s just a hunk of metal, Q. We’ll destroy it in the morning.”</p><p>These were the moments that kept their relationship from growing stale, and Q liked to remind himself of this when he felt himself start to get annoyed. “I know it’s dangerous,” Q said, patient but hopefully not patronizing, “but it’s also incredibly beautiful. Things like this…” he gestured towards the astrolabe, “we can learn so much from them. Not just about magic, but about <em>people</em>. The magicians who created it over a hundred years ago… what were they thinking about? What did they intend to do with it, and did they succeed in their goal? How did the magic manifest? Is there some large-scale disaster somewhere in the past, attributable to magic instead of the natural world, and we just don’t know it?”</p><p>“Q,” El said, the sound almost a moan. “Please talk about this with Jules in the morning, I’m <em>exhausted</em>.”</p><p>“Are you letting me out of bed in the morning?” Q asked.</p><p>A beat.</p><p>“Probably not.”</p><p>Q laughed, and kissed the bit of skin nearest his mouth, just above the collarbone. “Insatiable.”</p><p>“I’m beginning to think you were more eager for the astrolabe than you were for my return,” El said, and in a distant past, the words would be a tacit plea for reassurance, and Q would give it to him, would expound upon his devotion and love until El was forced to believe him.</p><p>But these days… “At least the astrolabe is new and shiny,” Q said. “And besides, we’re destroying it in the morning, as you so rightly point out. You, I’ve got to put up with for the rest of eternity.”</p><p>Of course Q wouldn’t have cared about this magical artifact if it meant further separation from El. Of course he’d forsake all manner of intellectual curiosity in the service of keeping El close to him, safe and happy. But that didn’t mean he didn’t care about anything else. Magic fascinated him. History fascinated him, in that way that just because he’d lived through some of it didn’t mean he understood it any better than most humans of the mortal variety. It was a shame, really, that the astrolabe was too dangerous to keep around. Q would never wish to use it for its apparent purpose, but so much magic, finely crafted, a unique application of many apparently contradictory principles…</p><p>“Where’s Pen?” El asked, and Q was surprised to find him still awake, after he’d failed to respond to Q’s latest quip.</p><p>“I think he and Jules were making plans for cleanup,” Q said. “Last I checked. But I’m sure M dragged Jules to bed, so…”</p><p>“So I missed him too, you should call him in here,” El said.</p><p>“<em>You</em> do it,” Q says. “I’m too comfortable to move.”</p><p>In the end, Q did concede to allow his mental wards to slip down just the tiniest bit, alerting Penny that his presence was wanted. When Pen entered the room, he made for El’s other side, ready to curl into him, but paused next to Q for a moment, staring down at the astrolabe.</p><p>“It’s a shame, almost, to destroy it,” he said.</p><p>Q grinned at him in the dark, and El groaned. “Come to <em>bed</em>,” he said. “I’ll remember this the next time you all try and send me away for a mission. I don’t even get the hero’s welcome I deserve—”</p><p>“Everyone in this house heard the welcome you got from Q,” Penny said, grumpy, but he let his hand fall from where it had been reaching out towards the astrolabe, and he flopped down, throwing an arm around El’s waist so his hand landed against Q’s elbow. “Now go to sleep.”</p><p>Q followed his instructions, but he thought about the astrolabe as he drifted off. As Penny said, it would be a shame to see it destroyed. He knew Jules would say the same thing in the morning.</p><p>El probably had the right of it. The very fact that Q’s fingers were itching, even now, to examine it again, to run every magical test he could think of, to disentangle the fibers of fantastical energy and learn their every secret… well, it all meant that getting rid of it was the right thing to do. And they would, in the morning. Or. Or maybe in a day or two. After all, there was so much left to <em>learn</em>.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. On Beds</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The very first time Q and El kiss, it escalates alarmingly quickly into something more than a quick spark of passion, and before too long, Q finds himself on the ground, his clothing rumpled and pushed clumsily out of the way, El on top of him, inside of him, the ground rough beneath his cheek, no tenderness below or above to speak of whatsoever.</p><p>He has <em>fond</em> memories of that first time, of an occasion when the thing that existed between them was tainted with fear and disbelief, but also carnal magnetism, impossible to deny. At the time, Q wasn’t sure yet if he hated El for teaching him the truth of what he’d now become. He hadn’t decided whether to stay or run. But El had wanted him with a desperation impossible to ignore, and Q had caved to it instantly, wanting it just as badly.</p><p>Over the years, for myriad reasons, they’ve turned to each other for sex without the comfort of a bed available to them. In the rare moments when Q is forced to the expediency of his own hand instead of the use of his partner’s, he touches himself remembering the scratchiness of straw in a barn as El drove into him, remembers sloppy, soul-stealing embraces in a secluded hot spring, can draw on the memories of being pinned up against a wall in an otherwise bare, freezing hovel, and having things done to him with a warm mouth that could bring a man to his knees every time.</p><p>In fact, the very first time Q and El ever <em>did</em> share a bed, there had been no lustful indulgences to be found. They were in Ireland, near to Q’s original home, close enough that a few days’ travel would have brought him back to… to a place he could not go, to a life that could no longer be his. He’d left in a huff weeks ago, determined to return to what he’d known before, and El had picked up and followed him, insistent, loyal, determined, but <em>fuming</em>, furious at Q for his stubbornness in trying to run away.</p><p>In those days, as Q now understood, El had been caught between terror at being left behind, and the worry deep inside that the best thing to do for Q would be to let him go. Q thanked him, now, for his stubbornness, for the drive his loneliness had given him. It took Q a long time to process, to come to the right decision, and if El had wandered off and let him be… who knew how long it would have taken for them to find each other again. Who knew how many memories and years they might have lost.</p><p>But traveling together with someone you were ignoring, someone you were fighting hard to hate, was no easy feat. And in the coldest month of the year, finding shelter was sometimes a difficult prospect. Hence the situation they had found themselves in that night, a roof over their heads and a fine evening meal, and the miracle of padding beneath them, a proper quilt to lie under… but only one.</p><p>
It was no trouble to share, except for the fact that it really was quite cold, and Q had been traveling with a silent, angry shadow for days, pretending he didn’t miss the sound of El’s voice, the easy conversation they’d fall into sometimes as they became fluent in each other’s favorite languages. The scratch of his stubble on the skin of his neck, the taste of him against his tongue. The way his hand cradled Q’s skull as he tilted down to kiss him, like he was afraid of breaking him apart, but couldn’t stop himself from touching. Q was fighting so hard against the pull of something that felt so very good, and sometimes it was hard to remember why.</p><p>And so it had only been natural that in that cocoon of bedding, Q would have squirmed towards the warmth of El’s body, and El would have pulled him in at once. They lay with Q’s back against El’s front, not speaking, but holding tight to one another, El’s breath tickling the back of Q’s neck, and it was the very best night of sleep he’d gotten in… well, maybe ever, at the very least since waking up after dying to find more of the same on the other side. They’d fucked each other dozens of times by then, but they’d never fallen asleep in each other’s arms. They’d never even really lingered after the act was over, despite the unspoken truth that craving each other’s touch went far beyond the realm of the sexual. It was a bridge Q couldn’t cross, even though he knew El would run to him if he did.</p><p>Q has fond memories of that night too, because upon waking he’d realized he was madly in love with the man holding him.</p><p>The memory is fond <em>now</em>, but of course at the time the thought had made him incandescently angry. He couldn’t afford to allow himself the luxury of this, when the thing that had happened to him, the thing that kept him breathing, that healed him against all sense, was sure not to last. He was bound to run out of time, or else he was bound to live forever, and either way the thought of being trapped into closeness with someone he couldn’t have chosen, someone <em>foreign</em>, and dangerous, someone who claimed to be older than the gods Q worshipped… he couldn’t handle it. He didn’t want it. Any of it. He wanted to go home and study his magic and become a respected member of his community. He wanted the life prescribed for him, as small and predictable as it now seemed.</p><p>So after he and El had both awakened and wordlessly disentangled themselves, he’d told El to stop following him, and he’d set off for home alone.</p><p>El obeyed, this time.</p><p>Well, sort of. He’d stayed nearby. Found ways to make himself useful in exchange for food and a place to sleep. Kept his distance from Q, but found ways to let him know he was waiting.</p><p>It would be two years before they spoke to each other again, and when they’d finally come together, a kiss sealing the promise of their new and fragile family, El had insisted on finding a bed before they fell into each other’s arms all over again. He’d told Q, adoring and thankful, that he meant to make him comfortable, meant to take his time, meant to give him the touch of loving hands somewhere they could be safe, and dry, and warm.</p><p>Q looks back with a certain measure of nostalgia on the rough, adventurous, nearly violent beginnings he and El shared. But he must admit, there’s nothing better than a soft place to land at the end of a hard road.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The next chapter is sort of a companion to this one, so expect more to follow soon!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. On Consummation</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This continues on from chapter two!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>[A continuation from “On Beds”, chapter two of <em>The Creation of Quentin</em>.]</p><p>So it was that the first time Q ever made love to his soulmate, they’d already been fucking for years.</p><p>There was no difference between then and now, except for the simple fact that the tenderness that existed between them was no longer a hidden, shameful thing, but a bright spot in the center of Q’s heart. He no longer had to excuse his shaking hands, the way El’s lips on his made him want to weep. He no longer had to pretend that physical expediency was all that drove his desire to feel El inside him, but could instead acknowledge the miracle of the most beautiful man in the world wanting not only his body, but also the rest of him. His mind, his heart, his magic, whatever it was inside of his soul that kept breaking and regrowing itself with jagged edges.</p><p>“You can’t imagine how I’ve wanted this,” El said to him, his lips on Q’s throat, hands spanning across his hips, pinning him down, holding him close.</p><p>Q laughed. “I think I can.” He squirmed, feeling them both sliding hard against one another, pressed between their naked torsos. But he knew El meant far more than that. It had been two <em>years</em> since he’d felt El’s hands on him, heard the rumble of his voice in intimate closeness. Two years, and it had been torture every second. If he wasn’t careful, he’d ruin this wonderful moment by hating himself for keeping it from happening for so long.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” he said. He couldn’t help it, he needed El to know how much he’d— “I’m sorry I made us both wait so—”</p><p>“No,” El said, breath hot against Quentin’s skin, hands shaking where they stroked up his side, gathering in his hair, fingers petting along the planes of his face. “No, please, I tried to force it, I wanted you, I didn’t listen…”</p><p>In a flash, Q realized that they would have all the time in the world to discuss this, to apologize to one another and to insist there was nothing to apologize <em>for</em>. Here, now, they had comfort and privacy and each other. It wouldn’t do to waste it, not even with eternity in front of them. No amount of time could ever be enough, and this was the revelation at the center of everything. Q shook his head, smiled, nuzzled at El’s face until he lifted up, so they could slot their lips together again. He snaked a hand between their bodies, palming at the perfect hard length of El, wrapping a fist loosely around him.</p><p>El made a noise like Q was hurting him, and the rush of familiarity mixed with newness made Q whimper against El’s lips. They knew how to touch each other. They knew how to make it good. And here, now, when Q could be confident that this wasn’t his last opportunity, when he no longer pretended to himself that every caress was a goodbye, he meant to make it the best that it could be.</p><p>Q felt every slow second of the journey it took to disentangle himself from El’s arms, wend his way down his body, wrap his lips around his length. Suck cries of pleasure and pain out of him, his own need forgotten in the desperate wish to make El’s body know the worship of being loved. When El came, choking on a gasp and bowing his head back against the bedding beneath him, Q collapsed with his head on El’s stomach, feeling the tremors of his lover’s skin, the throbbing between his own legs growing more pronounced now that his immediate goal was sated.</p><p>And then, without quite knowing how it had happened, El’s hands were on him, he was being tugged, flipped, his back thumping against soft fabric, El’s mouth on his own, rough, slanting, something harsher and more heated taking over the moment. But it wasn’t like it had ever been between them before. El’s desperation was familiar to Q. When they’d touched each other in the past, neither of them had known what it would be, what they might become. Q was running from it. El was holding too tight to something that could never be real. Today, that desperation was still present, obvious in the burn and squeeze of El’s fingers against his arm, the weight of his hips pinning Q down, the harshness of his breathing, the sharp scent of his sweat and satisfaction. But this time… gods, this time there was <em>joy</em>, too, a happiness so uncomplicated and pure that Q marveled at the fact that such a feeling existed inside of El, that time and hardship had not burned it out of him entirely. How lucky Q was, to be here for him, a haven at the end of unfathomable isolation.</p><p>“I want to make you feel this,” El said, whispering the words like they were sacred, like he was afraid to even say them. “As happy as I am right now.”</p><p>“I am happy,” Q said, gasping and squirming as El’s hands moved down the length of his body, as his fingers, wet with moisture pulled magically from the air around them, dipped to split him open. “You make me so happy.”</p><p>“I can’t imagine why I’ve been given such a gift,” El said, and it was so heartbreakingly sincere, not empty flattery, but the simple bald truth. Q closed his eyes, breathing in gasps as El moved his fingers inside. “I’ll work to be worthy of it.”</p><p>Q shook his head, fighting for the words, everything flying out of him. They’d done this before too, El had been gentle with him, they’d even whispered sweetness and care to each other in the throes of passion, but it was never allowed to last beyond the moment of physical release. This time, Q knew it would, knew it would last for the span of eternity. And that made all the difference. It made him <em>eager</em> to face whatever impossible future awaited him now, eager to become fully whatever inhuman, unnatural thing he now knew himself to be, because if <em>El</em> was unkillable, then it couldn’t be truly bad…</p><p>“You don’t have to be worthy,” Q finally managed to find an answer, as El loomed above him, eyes shining with unshed tears. “Just be with me. And I’ll be with you. That’s—that’s enough. That’s <em>everything</em>.”</p><p>When they were joined, it was like every time they’d ever done it before, and also like the very first one. It was a culmination, a consummation of years of confusion and uncertainty, but it was also just the start of all they would one day become.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thanks everyone. &lt;3</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. On Despair</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Content Warning: this snippet focuses on Quentin's mental health and delves into the way he feels in his darkest moments, including expressing a wish to die and obliquely referencing past attempts. It has a hopeful outlook ultimately, but please use caution!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He wishes he could explain it to himself. Wishes that every time he feels like the world is ending, he could find a damn good excuse. He wishes it <em>lined up</em>, with reality, that when he experienced something horrific, his body and mind decided to panic over it, and that other times, when all is well with him and those he loves, he could believe it.</p>
<p>But that’s not how it works.</p>
<p>There have always been words for it, changing over the years. Melancholy, now called treatment-resistant depression. Different concepts and medicines and theories and researches, and Q has tried them all, if only to appease his desperate family.</p>
<p>He’d like to pretend he’s gotten better at handling it over the centuries, and the truth is… he <em>has</em>. Or rather, there have been periods of his impossibly long life where he’s been quite good at taking care of himself. And then there have been other periods when he hasn’t been. The progression is not linear. The progress does not hold. It will always be this way, and learning to live with <em>that</em> is the earliest trick he’d been forced to learn, the earliest truth of himself before his first death had taken away the promise of future oblivion.</p>
<p>He doesn’t want to die. Even when he wants to die, he doesn’t <em>want to die</em>. It’s too much to want anything, when the despair swamps over him. To lie in bed, still as a corpse, curled into the smallest possible space his body will fill, is still unbearable in the choices it requires, the wants it displays. He does not <em>want</em> to be lying down, any more than he wants to be going for a run. He cannot make his body do anything or want anything, and convalescence is the closest thing to a choiceless existence he can achieve.</p>
<p>It scares his family, every time. Even knowing he won’t do it, won’t take steps to die, and that even if he did, it wouldn’t <em>do</em> anything. This ultimate expression of unending despair is barred for him in his immortal state. He’s fucking tried in the past, is the thing. He’s tried, and he’s woken up, and he’s tried again. The look on El’s face when Q had told him was enough to make him swear to himself he’d never do it again, but that promise isn’t always so easy to keep. Q is a monster, inhuman, a grotesque mistake: for what is a human being but a tangible, limited consciousness with a beginning and an end? Take away the end, and what does he become?</p>
<p>He hates himself when the concept of <em>hate</em> is too heavy to carry. But then he hates himself so much <em>more</em> when the despair starts to lift, when his body and brain remember to care about things again. He hates himself because he cannot commit to the hatred. Because to hate himself would be to hate something that his family loves very much. How can he conceive of himself as a despicable creature unworthy of attention, when he simultaneously believes El is good and true and honest, smart enough to determine his own priorities, to surround himself with people that are worth it? Even in the worst of times, Q cannot doubt that El <em>loves</em> him, and he must have his reasons, as obscure and impossible as they seem at times.</p>
<p>It’s a tangled web, and it sticks to his skin, makes waking up out of the deepest depths of the darkness worse than being encased in the middle of it. Hurts like clawing his way out of the grave, blinking up into the blinding light.</p>
<p>El and Margo and Penny and the others are always waiting for him, though. He can always bury his face into the skin of El’s neck, block out the worst of the light while his eyes adjust. Julia can always lift him out of the hole, surprisingly strong as she raises him from the depths. Margo can cajole him out of the muck, Penny can force him into a new perspective. Their presence is really all they can offer, as much as they all wish they could do more.</p>
<p>In the early days, El tried to do more. Was desperate to understand, to help, to fix it. Couldn’t stand the very idea of Q’s pain.</p>
<p>El is no stranger to despair, but he has the gift of more or less understanding where it comes from. When he grieves, he knows what he’s grieving. In his worst moments, Q could almost hate him for that and that alone. He can remember in their first few years together, trying to explain in a halting language that he wasn’t sad or scared or angry or <em>sick</em> because of his current situation, or for any rational reason whatsoever. It wasn’t becoming immortal, losing his old life, that had done this to him. Or at least it was a lot more complicated than just that. He can still recall the look on El’s face when he’d said it had first happened to him when he’d been no more than ten years old, that his completely ordinary, happy, fulfilled and comfortable life had been interrupted by a storm cloud, a crashing wave, pulling him into the undertow, and that he is never, ever going to understand why, or learn a way to fix it, magic or mundane.</p>
<p>El had been crushed at the thought of having no way of helping him, and Q understands that now, can see the depth of love in his lover’s helplessness. At the time, it had felt like rejection, like horror, like El was finally waking up to the fact that Q could never, ever be worth the kind of devotion he’d been offering thus far.</p>
<p>In Q’s darkest moments these days, he can at least look back to <em>that</em> time of his life, and marvel at the comparative ease with which he now weathers the worst of his suicidal brain worms.</p>
<p>Despair is woven into the fabric of his personhood. It is not contingent on a place or a time, it is the thing he carries with him, a cosmic balance to the scales of his otherwise charmed existence. They all have their darknesses, the pieces of eternity they find most difficult to carry. But Q doesn’t think he’s being a martyr when he says he has the worst of it, and he knows the others agree.</p>
<p>But eternity has its advantages. The universe has thrown so much at him, and he is still standing. The despair of mere days or weeks or months or years cannot stand against the weight of centuries. He knows the darkness does not last, because he’s lived through its most shadowed and sinister excesses. Q knows exactly how to be happy, and he has people who love him. He has the proof of concept he needs, to lift his head to the sun and embrace another day.</p>
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